1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of replying to an electronically-received message; the message is sent from an original message sender to a user who receives the message using electrical hardware. The electrical hardware includes, without limitation, mobile telephones, smart phones, communicators, wireless messaging terminals, personal computers, computers and application specific devices. It includes devices able to communicate in any manner over any kind of network, such as GSM or UMTS, CDMA and WCDMA mobile radio, Bluetooth, IrDA etc.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Messaging and communications in general is, in the prior art, symmetric—namely you either exchange text (SMS, email, Fax, letter, etc. . . . ) or you talk to another person. But you rarely mix the two in the same exchange: if someone sends you a SMS, you don't reply with an email.
SMS texting, email and IM (Instant messaging) are all hugely popular. But because they are fundamentally symmetric forms of communication, once someone sends you a SMS, for example, then the normal way of responding is with a reply SMS. For many people, voice is still a preferred communication mechanism, but it can be awkward to respond to someone who has sent you an SMS by just calling them up: the natural assumption is that they sent a SMS because that was their preferred messaging type (perhaps they were in a meeting, or driving etc or simply prefer SMS'ing) and hence calling them on the telephone ‘breaks’ the protocol established by the SMS sender. A very large proportion of consumers have also yet to master sending SMS messages; an inability for them to reply in an appropriate manner is not only frustrating for them, but clearly a lost revenue opportunity for the telecoms operators.
It is known to convert voicemail for a mobile telephone user into text, with that text then sent as an SMS or email to the user. This is described in more detail in WO 2004/095821 A2, to SpinVox, the contents of which are incorporated by reference.
SpinVox therefore performs one form of asymmetric communication: people can speak messages which are then converted to text and sent as text to the message recipient. This leverages the increasing capability of mobile telephones for both voice and display: speech for leaving the voice mail, doing what a mobile phone does best (which is voice communication); and then text for displaying the incoming SMS text (which is a fast and non-intrusive way of getting the message received).
One feature deployed in the SpinVox service that converts voicemail to SMS text messages is a link in the SMS text message which enables the recipient to directly access and hear that message—QuickLinks™ (see GB2420942B, the contents of which are incorporated by reference).
The present invention takes the idea of an embedded link in a text message and builds a new message reply mechanism around it.